New Yorker

New Yorker magazine staff writer Adam Gopnik in his February 15, 2018, article “Four Truths About the Florida School Shooting” offers “four simple truths worth saying again, in the aftermath of the Florida massacre, about gun control and gun violence.” Yet for me, perhaps, the most compelling is the first truth (the boldface is mine):

1. The gun lobby, and the Republican Party it controls, have accepted as a matter of necessity the ongoing deaths of hundreds of children as the price that they are prepared to pay for the fetishization of weapons. The claim of this lobby’s complicity in murder is not exaggerated or hysterical but, by now, quite simple and precise: when you refuse to act to stop a social catastrophe from happening, you are responsible for the consequences of the social catastrophe. If you refuse to immunize your children and a measles epidemic breaks out, you are implicated in the measles. If you refuse to pay money for sewers and cholera breaks out, you are complicit in the cholera. Acts have consequences. This complicity includes all of the hand-wringers and the tut-tutters and the “nothing to be done”-ers as much as the N.R.A. hardcore. Many people have predicted, repeatedly, that one gun massacre would lead to the next—and that more gun massacres would probably take place in one year in America than in the rest of the civilized world combined—and they have been proved right, and then right again. Since everyone knew that this would happen again, those who did nothing to stop it happening again—and who did everything they could to see that no one else could do anything to stop it happening again—are complicit when it happens, again.

The power of this truth is undeniable in my opinion — and clearly undeniable in the opinion of all the students and others across the U.S. organizing protests and other actions to bring attention to this fact.

In reading Gopnik’s article I am reminded of the following quote attributed to German pastor Martin Niemöller regarding complicity and the Nazis:

First they came for the Socialists, and I did not speak out—
Because I was not a Socialist.

Then they came for the Trade Unionists, and I did not speak out—Because I was not a Trade Unionist.

Then they came for the Jews, and I did not speak out—Because I was not a Jew.

Fictional response to school shootings

The school shooting in Florida and the accompanying failures to prevent it caused me to add a half page to my sci fi novel THE MISSISSIPPI DIVIDE.

In the novel, the motivation for the antagonist — who starts out as William Colker before he replaces last names with numbers— has always been to encapsulate a part of the U.S. to seal it off from the vices and horrors of the rest of the U.S. and the world. Yet in reading articles about how the Florida school shooting could have possibly been prevented, I realized that my antagonist would be 18 in 2018 according to the timeline I created for the universe.

And that’s when I realized I could give him a more personal motivation to seal off his world than a general motivation. I thus wrote the following half-page prologue for the novel:

Prologue — The Trigger2018 East of the Mississippi River

Her body lay sprawled at the base of the high school entrance steps, her arms upraised as if to protect her head from the shooter’s deadly aim. William Colker knew that, had he been five minutes earlier, he would undoubtedly be sprawled dead alongside her.

The rage that welled up inside him caused his heart to race and sweat to break out on his forehead. He was one of the few high school students who should have been prepared for this. The debate team had been preparing pros and cons of not allowing people with documented mental health issues to buy or own guns of any kind. His fellow debate team members had researched the leniency of federal gun purchase background checks as well as the lack of active shooter drills for soft targets such as schools and religious institutions.

As a first responder now ran towards William, waving him to get away from Sheila’s body, William felt in his pocket for the locket he should have placed around her neck that morning on the one-year anniversary of their dating. The locket contained the senior class photos of both William and Sheila.

His hand gripped the locket as he vowed – someday he would have the power to prevent such massacres! He would find a way to circumvent the politicians who kowtowed to the gun lobby, the FBI personnel who didn’t take immediate action on citizen-provided tips, and everyone who chose financial gain over human life.

He owed it to Sheila!

If we as Americans do not stop being complicit in school shootings and similar events, we, too, may someday face a totalitarian government (as in THE MISSISSIPPI DIVIDE) intent on sealing us off — and apart — from such threats.

Perhaps the tide has finally turned — and sensible truths such as Adam Gopnik presented will be put into action rather than just put into words.

P.S. In the last few days there have been many excellent articles on prevention strategies including ones about active shooter training in schools. For those people who think that such drills will unnecessarily scare children, it might be a good idea to study how Israel trains everyone, including small children, to respond to life-and-death situations.

Phyllis Zimbler Miller (@ZimblerMiller) has an M.B.A. from The Wharton School and is the author of fiction and nonfiction books/ebooks. Phyllis is available by skype for book group discussions and may be reached at pzmiller@gmail.com

I admit it. As a long-time feminist I have been dealing with accounts of sexual harassment for many years (and my own numerous experiences of gender discrimination). I’ve just written three guest posts on using digital signage for internal communications storytelling to provide clear examples of what is — and is not — sexual harassment. And I’ve read news article after news article describing the sexual harassment charges against men in positions of power. And I still don’t get it.

What’s not to get, you ask? Men in power (and the occasional woman in power I suppose) feel entitled to say or do anything sexual, especially in the workplace. But why?

The clearest explanation of this phenomenon that I have found recently is in the November 20, 2017, New Yorker article “Letter From Silicon Valley: The Disrupters” by New Yorker staff writer Sheelah Kolhatkar.

Reading this long article, I came across Kolhatkar’s explanation of “The Al Capone Theory of Sexual Harassment” by Valerie Aurora, the principal consultant at Frame Shift Consulting, and Leigh Honeywell, a technology fellow at the A.C.L.U. The reference is to Al Capone finally being arrested for tax evasion after years of federal agents trying to get him on “serious charges, including smuggling and murder.”

“People who engage in sexual harassment or assault are also likely to steal, plagiarize, embezzle, engage in overt racism, or otherwise harm their business,” the pair wrote. “All of these behaviors are the actions of someone who feels entitled to other people’s property—regardless of whether it’s someone else’s ideas, work, money, or body. Another common factor was the desire to dominate and control other people.”

Kolhatkar goes on to say:

When I asked Aurora why she thought this connection existed, she said, “There are several reasons, but the most interesting one is entitlement. The same personality flaw says, ‘I am more important than all other people.’ ”

I’ve been pondering this explanation while more and more news stories break about powerful men getting away with sexually harassing women and how nondisclosure agreements and secret settlements have hushed up the victims.

It’s interesting how many sci fi stories deal with controlling sexual reproduction and sexual urges. Even Lois Lowry’s bestselling book THE GIVER, the 1994 Newbery Medal winner and thus considered a book for children, deals with the suppression of sexual drives.

(And this brings me to a sudden realization. In my sci fi story THE MOTHER SIEGE — can be read for free on Wattpad at http://budurl.com/MSintro — I have dealt with total control over pregnancy, yet I did not deal with controlling inappropriate sexual behavior. Obviously I need to consider this question in the planned sequel.)

What is the solution to creating safe workplace environments for women as well as all people including minorities targeted due to various prejudices?

First, language has to change. I saw this myself many years ago as a newspaper reporter who was also teaching news writing courses at Temple University’s Center City campus in Philadelphia. At that time I had a huge collection of news stories that degraded women, including a front-page article from The Wall Street Journal that identified a woman in the article as “the blonde.”

Before I could even teach my students how to accurately portray women in their news stories, I had to work through the prejudices of both the male and female students in the class. At first these students didn’t understand why the language used in news articles could hurt the real-life perception of women.

I would stand in front of the class and explain how “girl” — routinely used then to refer to adult women — was demeaning in the same article where “men” was used to refer to adult men.

Although over the years the depiction of women in news stories has improved (and kudos to The New Yorker for always describing what both men and women are wearing), there is still room for improvement.

And why is this so important? Because public language used to discuss women can lead to inappropriate language and behavior in the workplace.

When it is acceptable to joke at work that you’d like to sleep with such-and-such women, the way is paved to move on to sexual actions. And this is as true for language about minorities as it is for women.

How many times have we all heard someone say something inappropriate about a person and not corrected the speaker? I’m not suggesting we yell at the speaker, only say something such as: “That statement is inappropriate and I would appreciate your not saying it ever again.”

If we don’t speak up, we have tacitly given approval for inappropriate comments — and by extension, approval for inappropriate actions.

Only when we first change language can we begin to change the mindsets of people who, as Aurora and Honeywell wrote, “desire to dominate and control other people.”

As a first step, can we all agree to monitor our own language and the language of our colleagues and friends to help make the workplace and other places a safe environment?

Phyllis Zimbler Miller (@ZimblerMiller) has an M.B.A. from The Wharton School and is the author of fiction and nonfiction books/ebooks. Phyllis is available by skype for book group discussions and may be reached at pzmiller@gmail.com

In the September 12th New Yorker article “Coming Apart” by George Packer, I learned a disturbing piece of information:

A former Navy SEAL has come up with a manufacturing strategy to make “armored” vehicles much more resistant to IEDs and other attacks – BUT the former Navy SEAL cannot bid on undertaking this important mission the Pentagon has said it wants done for Humvees because BIDS ARE NOT BEING ACCEPTED.

(As Mitch and I wrote in the novel LT. COMMANDER MOLLIE SANDERS, “IEDs are not an electronics problem. They’re an engineering problem.”)

The information on this situation is only part of Packer’s overall article, which is an essay on the American public’s attitude since 9/11.

Let me explain this “armored” vehicle situation in more detail:

Packer begins his New Yorker article with the story of former Navy SEAL Chris Berman, who was hired in 2004 by the private security company Blackwater.

Berman volunteered to go on a “food-escort detail” to Falluja, “but at the last minute his place was taken by one of his friends, Scott Helvenston.”

Helvenston and three other Blackwater security guards, riding in a Mitsubishi Pajero, were ambushed and killed on their way to Falluja. While waiting to escort Helvenston’s coffin back to the U.S., Berman began drawing designs for armoring the Pajero so that Helvenston and the other three men might have survived.

Berman opened a factory in Kuwait that successfully produced an armored vehicle for security companies working in Iraq. He closed this factory in 2008 to focus on the project he’d moved onto five years after 9/11:

His new goal was to do something about the lightly armored Humvees used by U.S. military personnel. Surviving a blast while riding in these is also a major “armored” vehicle issue.

According to Packer, “For several years, the Pentagon has had plans to rebuild Humvees used in the war, and improve their armor, instead of buying new ones.”

In 2007 Berman started the company Granite Tactical Vehicles and developed a model design to improve the armor on existing Humvees. BUT there have been no government bids on this supposed Pentagon project. This is because, according to Packer:

[T]he government kept putting off requests for bids, in part because the main Humvee manufacturer, a large corporation in Indiana called AM General, appeared to have enough clout in Congress to get the process delayed, staving off competition.

Packer goes on to say that ”the rumored date for accepting bids is now this fall.”

I’m not an engineer – I cannot say that Berman’s design is the best (although Packer says: “People who knew the business said that Berman’s design was among the best.”).

What I can say is:

Let’s get out the word about this situation to people (such as our House and Senate representatives and any friends you may have in the Pentagon) to “motivate” the Pentagon to open bids right now – and quickly choose a good design – to get much better protection for the Humvees.

Will you help?

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